Gunmen abduct two Pakistani UN staff members

PanARMENIAN.Net - Gunmen have kidnapped two men working for the UN Children's Fund from Pakistan's southern city of Karachi, police said Saturday, April 18, according to Reuters.

The two Pakistani men were on their way to a bus terminal to pick up some relatives when they were taken, the police official said. The men were taken on Thursday night, he said.

So far, no ransom call had been received, he said, and it was unclear who was holding the men. The police officer asked not to be named since he was not authorized to speak to the media.

A spokeswoman for the UN Children's Fund, also known as UNICEF, was not available to comment.

The port city of Karachi is Pakistan's financial heart and home to 18 million people. Many neighborhoods are considered Taliban strongholds, including the area of Shorab Goth, which is near where the men were taken.

In February, gunmen kidnapped three Pakistani men working for the UN's World Health Organization in the northwestern town of Tank. They are still being held.

Pakistan is plagued by kidnapping gangs. Foreigners and wealthy Pakistanis are frequently targeted and kidnappings are reported on a near-daily basis.

Current hostages include an American aid worker, the son of a former prime minister, the son of a former provincial governor, and many professionals such as doctors and lawyers.

Militant groups such as the Taliban often use such kidnappings to raise money for their insurgency.

The Taliban have been fighting for years to overthrow the democratically elected government and impose strict Islamic law on the country of 180 million people.

The Armenian Genocide (1915-23) was the deliberate and systematic destruction of the Armenian population of the Ottoman Empire during and just after World War I. It was characterized by massacres, and deportations involving forced marches under conditions designed to lead to the death of the deportees, with the total number of deaths reaching 1.5 million.

The majority of Armenian Diaspora communities were formed by the Genocide survivors.

Present-day Turkey denies the fact of the Armenian Genocide, justifying the atrocities as “deportation to secure Armenians”. Only a few Turkish intellectuals, including Nobel Prize winner Orhan Pamuk and scholar Taner Akcam, speak openly about the necessity to recognize this crime against humanity.

The Armenian Genocide was recognized by Uruguay, Russia, France, Lithuania, the Italian Chamber of Deputies, majority of U.S. states, parliaments of Greece, Cyprus, Argentina, Belgium and Wales, National Council of Switzerland, Chamber of Commons of Canada, Polish Sejm, Vatican, European Parliament and the World Council of Churches.

Operation Nemesis was a covert operation by the Armenian Revolutionary Federation carried out from 1920 to 1922, during which a number of former Ottoman political and military figures were assassinated for their role in the Armenian Genocide.